


and i feel for you

by easystreets



Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: Canon typical events, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Soulmate AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 07:02:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27129632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/easystreets/pseuds/easystreets
Summary: AU where whatever your soulmate feels, you feel. Connor feels Evan’s everything.
Relationships: Evan Hansen/Connor Murphy
Comments: 13
Kudos: 95





	and i feel for you

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Just a quick TW: there's implied self-harm throughout and a mention of blood. Also, drugs. And a minor sexy scene but it's just implied solo action, so. Nothing that would be out of place in canon.
> 
> Edit 20/12/28 for typos.

The first time Evan's arm starts to sting, it’s in seventh grade science class. He’s too nervous to ask to go to the bathroom, so he waits until his mom comes home to figure out what the hell is wrong with him now.

“Oh, honey,” she says, barely looking up from her Anxiety Parent Weekly magazine, “it’s just growing pains.” 

He accepts that. Leave it to Evan to screw up growing pains.

The stinging continues over the next few months. Sometimes, Evan jolts awake in the middle of the night, convinced that blood is drooling down his arms. There’s always nothing there, just a canvas of empty skin, but it’s so real that he can almost smell the metallic stench in the air; feel the clotting of it until it scabs over, rough and chicken-scratch. It leaves him quiet in his room like it was nothing, haunted in the morning.

In eighth grade it stops, and Evan thinks that’s it, that the weird growing pains in his wrists (and shoulders and legs and sometimes thighs and stomach) are gone now. It stays that way until Connor Murphy comes back on the first day of school-- no one really knows where from; the leading theory is juvie for stabbing a kid behind a 7-11, but Evan’s also heard the story of him having brain cancer so often that there probably is a twinge of truth to it. His hair is shaved and he’s thinner than before and wearing baggy blue jeans and the pain starts when Connor asks to go to the bathroom and comes back half-an-hour later, clutching his arm so tightly that his knuckles go from being a bruised sort of purple to bone-china white and his pencil stops doodling in the margins of his paper.

Evan’s looking so intently at him that he doesn’t even realize Connor’s staring back until the pain in his arm hitches again, and he sees Connor pressing down on the cuff of his jacket with the tip of a pencil until blood blooms through the fabric and the teacher sends him to the principal’s office.

Connor grins at Evan on his way out, eyes dark, and doesn’t come back until after Christmas break. The pain is a constant; a continual twinge of connection. He’s almost glad to feel it, because at least it means Connor’s alive.

* * *

His cheeks start burning red in the middle of the night, like some sort of campfire gone awry beneath his skin, and Connor thinks, oh fuck, just something else that’s absolutely wrong with me.

It’s accompanied with a melody of awkward and uncomfortable tics: a burning in the back of his throat that reminds him of cotton-mouth; tremors in his leg and a jitter in his hands despite the bullshit _no caffeine_ rule that this rehab has; this certain uncomfortable tightness in his chest. He hates that one the most.

It happens at the worst possible times. During group, when someone’s talking about their dead grandma or their handsy uncle or a particularly bad foster home. When Larry tries and fails to give a shit. When he returns to school, it gets worse, and it reminds him of that Evan Hansen kid. Not that he cares about him or anything like that, just--

Just he’s always freaked out. So maybe he would get it.

“Hey,” Connor says, when he finds Evan washing his hands in the bathroom, meticulously scrubbing his cuticles. “Uh, you’re Evan, right?”

“Yeah.” Evan says, a bit too quickly, not looking up. “Yeah! Yeah, I’m Evan.”

“I have a question to ask you,” Connor starts saying, but then Evan looks up from the sink, eyes wide and impossibly large, staring back at him like a distorted funhouse mirror, and--

Connor feels it the exact same Siamese time that Evan does, like a gunshot ripping through his chest. _Love_. Or at least the closest approximation of it that Connor can feel. Hot and sticky and sweet. A swelling in his chest; a magnetic connection in the air; all the clichés Mom says she had when she first met Dad. (And look how that turned out, Connor thinks.)

“Nevermind,” Connor says, doesn’t even look back at Evan before darting out the door. He lasts three more weeks at school before he falls behind on assignments and forgets to set his alarm in the morning and his therapist recommends a _higher level of care_. He tells himself it’s not about finding his soulmate, but so what if it is? It’s not like soulmates mean shit. It’s not like Connor knows what to do with love.

* * *

“What, are you high?” Jared says, when Evan bursts in the giggles for the third time that Monday.

“No,” Evan says, hiding his mouth behind his hands, shaking his head. “It’s just-- it’s _really_ funny.”

“Buddy,” says Jared. “It’s a documentary on the Civil War.” 

In the school parking lot, Connor lights his first joint. For the first time in years, he feels okay. So he keeps doing it.

Then, booze. Evan nearly falls asleep on the bus. His words slur in World History and he chalks it up to doubling up on his meds last night. One time, Connor buys an overpriced bag of coke that's more baby powder than anything and Evan has such a bad panic attack that he walks home in the middle of the school day with tears in his eyes and a heart beating so fast he thinks he might possibly die.

It’s not often Connor thinks of his soulmate (or anything other than making the pain stop), but when he does he’s sorry. It has to count for something.

Evan learns to deal with the nervous laughter; the random jolts of energy dull and he never gets that heart-attacky feeling again. He imagines Connor can't possibly feel much better.

* * *

Evan’s in Walmart with his Mom when his stomach suddenly lurches with lust.

He hurries to the bathroom; fiddles with his boxers until it doesn’t look like he’s a total pervert. God. Only he would get a boner in the middle of the produce section. It lasts for what feels like forever, too.

He doesn’t connect it to Connor until later, when he’s alone in his bedroom with his pants pooled around his legs, sweat beading on his face, humming into his pillow. After he’s done, Evan feels almost jealous. 

* * *

They’re having Family Movie Night.

Larry’s idea, really. It’s one of those eighties movies where everyone’s permed and wearing shoulder pads. Mom puts Connor in charge of popcorn and of course it burns and it’s Connor’s fault, and Larry bitches about it throughout the first scene and the title sequence. Zoe’s pissed to be missing band practice, and makes sure everyone fucking knows.

The movie doesn’t last, of course. Larry shuts it off and goes to bed. Mom throws out the untouched bag of popcorn and Zoe says she can still make the last hour of practice, so she leaves and Connor, like always, ends up alone.

He decides to smoke outside. They went through his room before he came home, and so an entire carton of cigarettes got tossed, but there’s one he buried in the backyard, in his and Zoe’s old sandbox, so Connor digs in it and finds the pack, relatively unscathed.

There’s always a lighter in his pocket these days, but to his surprise, there’s also a dime bag too, so Connor unrolls the cigarette and blows out some of the tobacco back into the sandbox. There’s a swing set right beside the sandbox-- they always used to jump off of it; Zoe was always terrified of getting hurt but Connor would always always jump-- and he sits there, soaking in the high before he gets too cold and has to go back inside and pretend like he’s not stoned out of his mind.

He’s enjoying himself when a sharp pain cuts clean through his arm. He doesn’t even think of the Evan Hansen kid until later, when he’s in his bedroom, still rubbing his arm, staring down at the swing set.

Maybe Evan’s the jumping kind too.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you! If you would like, leave a comment! I feed off of them :p


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